Major honours
Founded in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as the Zollner Pistons and relocated to Detroit in 1957, this franchise is remembered for two entirely different golden eras. The first was the late-1980s "Bad Boys," a team of Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman built around extreme physical defense and the so-called "Jordan Rules" — a defensive scheme of deliberately repeated contact whenever Michael Jordan drove to the rim — that blocked Jordan's Bulls three seasons running from 1988 to 1990 and won back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990. The second came in 2004, when a team with no superstars — Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace — beat a Lakers team featuring Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant 4-1 in the Finals. That team made six straight Eastern Conference finals from 2003 to 2008. Across two generations, this franchise proved that defense and cohesion alone can win a title.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The rivalry with the Chicago Bulls defined the Eastern Conference in the late 1980s. The moment when Detroit's starters refused to shake hands and walked off the court just before the final buzzer of a Game 4 sweep in 1991 is still cited as the emblem of this feud.